Parents and adolescents come into conflict over a variety of specific issues such as curfew, dating, drugs, etc. A developmental analysis suggests that most of these disagreements reflect a common theme of the adolescents' striving for independence from parental control. The proposed investigation is a clinical outcome study of an innovative treatment program to teach parents and adolescents generalized strategies for resolving such specific conflicts. The intervention synthesizes developmental findings concerning adolescence, principles of problem solving, principles of effective communication, and principles of behavior modification. Through modeling, behavior rehearsal, shaping, and feedback, families are taught a heuristic for structuring discussions of problems. The present study is part of a broader program evaluating the problem-solving-communication model. Previous research has demonstrated that 1) families exposed to the treatment improve more than a waiting-list control, and 2) the measures of parent-adolescent interaction discriminate between distressed and nondistressed families. The specific aim here is to provide a credible demonstration that the intervention produces changes beyond those attributable to the nonspecific effects of therapy. The problem-solving-communication training program will be contrasted to a heterogeneous, nonbehavioral treatment and to a waiting-list control in a three-group, between-subject design with measurements taken before therapy, after therapy, and at a two-month followup.